Departments, Programs and Centers

Centers

The Center for Bioethics

The Indiana University Center for Bioethics was established on the campus of Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in July 2001. The Center was intially created with funding from the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN), which was established by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. to the IU School of Medicine. In-kind support is provided by the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Law. The Center's mission is to provide leadership to advance the academic and public understanding of bioethics; to inform the development of social and public policy in health, research, and related fields; and to provide support for the provision of ethics services at Indiana University hospitals. The Center will fulfill its mission through research, education, and service as a universtiy-wide entity.

The Center for Economic Education

The Center's goal is to have all Indiana schools meet or exceed the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics so that all students will leave school with a basic understanding of economics and with the problem solving skills needed to become prosperous workers, consumers, and citizens in the next century. To meet these goals, the IUPUI Center for Economic Education and the Indiana Council for Economic Education strive to increase the economic understanding and decision making skills of students by providing educators with a basic understanding of economics, teaching strategies, and curriculum materials which are objective and consistent with state and national educational guidelines

The Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is an a political, non-profit organization. It was established at IUPUI in 2007 to promote the teaching of Chinese language and culture in central Indiana and facilitate mutual understanding between the peoples of China and United States.

Being based in one of America’s largest cities and one of its most important hubs for electronic communications, logistics, and life sciences, the Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is well-placed for developing effective relationships and networks between Indianapolis’s major public university (IUPUI), and its governmental, commercial, and civic leaders.

In developing the Confucius Institute’s public programming, many local organizations have agreed to collaborate, including local universities, Chinese community organizations, business and government agencies, museums, radio and television broadcasters, and organizations that receive international visitors.

Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is located in Cavanaugh Hall at the heart of the IUPUI campus. Its mission is to:

1. Teach Chinese using a variety of methods, including multimedia and the internet;
2. Train teachers to teach Chinese in primary schools, high schools and colleges;
3. Administer the Chinese Proficiency Test and tests to certify ability to teach Chinese as a foreign language;
4. Teach Chinese courses of various types in a variety of arenas;
5. Sponsor academic activities, cultural exchange programs, and Chinese language competitions;
6. Showcase Chinese movies and television programming;
7. Provide consulting services for individuals wishing to study in China;
8. Provide reference materials for educators and other professionals;
9. Promote business exchanges;
10. Facilitate government exchanges.

Institute for American Thought

The Institute for American Thought is a unique research facility bringing to IUPUI and to central Indiana an internationally acclaimed concentration of resources and scholarship that focuses on fundamental strongholds of American thought and culture. The institute unites the teaching faculty, editing specialists, and research holdings of the Peirce Edition Project, the Santayana Edition, the Josiah Royce Critical Edition, and the Frederick Douglass Papers with the more broadly-based historical, literary and popular culture resources of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. All of these research units combine to support the Institute's related academic programs in American studies and professional editing.

The institute is structured around a research center that supports the work of its academic programs and scholarly editions while providing a singular resource for students and scholars from Indiana and worldwide. In contrast to centers that restrict their focus to the study of American political and economic thought, the Institute focuses more broadly on American contributions to philosophy and to the advancement of thought at the highest intellectual level of Western culture. The Bradbury Center, along with the free-standing but closely affiliated Max Kade Center for German-American Studies, extend the Institute's mainstream resources in American cultural history. Current scholarship in the institute concentrates on the production of reliable new texts for seminal American thinkers, on the professional editing process that preserves their writings for future generations, and on the understanding and dissemination of American thought and culture through the promotion of related research, public lectures, and other scholarly activities.

The institute administers both an undergraduate minor and an overseas exchange program in American Studies, and an interdisciplinary graduate program in professional editing; it also is associated with the American Philosophy concentration of the Department of Philosophy's master's program. In addition, the institute provides an editorial home for The New Ray Bradbury Review. No other research institute in the country combines academic programs, textual scholarship, and a research agenda in such a comprehensive program with sizeable archival and library collections documenting the major contributions of seminal figures in American cultural and intellectual history.

The significance and quality of the institute's holdings has consistently attracted international interest and brings many scholars of American thought and culture to central Indiana. International partnerships with scholar groups in Canada and Germany are already in place, as are two undergraduate student exchange programs with Universities in Great Britain. A resident fellows program will attract researchers who are publishing and teaching in wide-ranging areas of American studies, textual studies, American philosophy, and the history of science. The institute is working to turn its interrelated programs into a national model for interdisciplinary research, teaching, and publication in support of America's intellectual heritage.

•Max Kade German-American Center

In cooperation with the department and several community organizations, the IU School of Liberal Arts operates a center for German-related activities in the Duetsche Haus-Athenaeum. The Max Kade Center also offers two awards annually for students to study German overseas, two graduate fellowships, and a scholarship for the dual-degree program in engineering and German.

•Scholarly Editions

The IU School of Liberal Arts is home to five scholarly edition projects: the Peirce Edition Project, a contributor to the school's research culture since 1976; and three four more recent arrivals, the Frederick Douglass Papers, the Santayana Edition, the Josiah Royce Critical Edition, and The Bradbury Edition (The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury). This remarkable concentration of major editions establishes IUPUI as a world center for scholarly editing and provides unique opportunities for our students and faculty.

•Frederick Douglass Papers

Frederick Douglass (1818-95), one of the nineteenth century's most influential human rights activists, escaped slavery in 1838 and became a leading orator, journalist, and historian of the abolition movement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The mission of Frederick Douglass Papers Project is to produce scholarly editions of his many works. Yale University Press has published the project's five-volume series of Douglass's speeches, interviews, and debates; two of Douglass's three autobiographies; and one of a contemplated four-volume series of Douglass's correspondence,. Editors are working on the final autobiographical text and the second volume of the Correspondence series, and plan a fourth series consisting of Douglass's published editorials and other short writings. Originating at Yale University, the project moved to West Virginia University before relocating permanently at IUPUI. It is supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

•Peirce Edition Project

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) was a scientist and philosopher. He is the founder of pragmatism and is considered one of America's greatest thinkers. The primary mission of the Peirce Edition Project is to produce a 30-volume critical edition of Peirce's writings, many never before published. The Peirce Project, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by private funding, is assisted by an internationally renowned team of advisors and contributors. The resources of the project, which include an extensive photocopy and microform collection of Peirce's manuscripts and the Max H. Fisch Library (a large private collection on classical and American philosophy and on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American culture), have been consolidated in the Institute for American Thought with the resources of the Santayana and Douglass Editions and serves a wide community of students and researchers.

•Bradbury Edition

Ray Bradbury (1920 - ) is one of America's most well known authors of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. The recipient of a special Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to these genres as well as a National Book Award, Bradbury has written over six hundred short stories, many of them widely anthologized, as well as a half dozen novels such as Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury's stories have been collected in a variety of anthologies but never according to their sequence of composition (a Bradbury story can typically be published decades after it was first written). Published by Kent State University Press, The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is a critical and chronological edition which will present Bradbury's stories to the reading public for the first time in the order in which they were written, with a historical introduction examining Bradbury's creative relationship to genre writing. The Bradbury Center, which edits this edition, also edits a yearly journal, The New Ray Bradbury Review, which is devoted to studying the impact of Bradbury's writings on American culture. The Center is supported by private donations.

•Santayana Edition

George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-born American philosopher, best-selling novelist, poet, and critic. After abandoning a successful academic career at Harvard University, he lived a relaxed and ascetic life devoted to contemplation, writing, and quietly generous friendship. His broadly humanistic outlook is grounded in European culture with deep appreciation of Asian philosophy and irreducibly influenced by American experience. Santayana's philosophy is a serious and cheerful alternative to irrationalism of all kinds. It is materialism without reductionism and idealism without fanaticism. The Santayana Edition will produce a 21-volume critical edition of his works published by MIT Press. Edition resources include photocopy collections of correspondence and manuscripts; a library of Santayana first editions, secondary literature, and dissertations; and an archive of reviews and critical articles. The Santayana Edition is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and private donors.

•Josiah Royce Critical Edition

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was a California mining-town born philosopher who made his way to become a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Among Royce’s students was George Santayana. Royce is known for the broad sweep of his thought, writing about the ultimate context within which we think and live. The "Beloved Community" is one of the concepts he added to our lexicon. Besides sophisticated metaphysical and logical writings, Royce wrote on such topics as war and football. Royce addressed the topics that were central to his time and our time. While considered by many to be merely a religious thinker, Royce contributed much to philosophic, ethics, and social thought.

The National Council on Public History

For nearly 30 years, NCPH has worked to advance the field of public history. Today the organizaton promotes professionalism among history practitioners and encourages their engagement with the public. We are a membership association of consultants, museum professionals, government historians, professors and students, archivists, teachers, cultural resource managers, curators, film and media producers, historical interpreters, policy advisors, and many others. Members confer at the annual meeting each spring and share their expertise in our journal, The Public Historian, the newsletter, Public History News, and on the e-mail listserv, H-Public.

Today there are more than 100 graduate programs in public history and a surge in undergraduate courses and programs across the United States, as well as growing interest abroad. NCPH works in close cooperation with the IUPUI Department of History, which has one of the nation's preeminent Masters of Arts in Public History programs. Currently, NCPH is leading a national effort to reform tenure and promotion poicies so that they will more effectively address the public history work of faculty, such as civic engagement projects.

The Center on Philanthropy

Philanthropy is a potent force for good, and it must be strengthened and focused so that it can be put to work in the most effective ways possible. Established in 1987, The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University is a leading academic center dedicated to increasing the understanding of philanthropy and improving its practice worldwide through research, teaching, training, and public affairs programs in philanthropy, fundraising, and management of nonprofit organizations. The Center pioneered the field of Philanthropic Studies and its unique approach to the study of philanthropy through the liberal arts and other academic and professional disciplines. The Center offers PhD, MA and BA degrees in Philanthropic Studies. It also offers programs that enrich student's experiences, such as The Fund Raising School, the Women's Philanthropy Institute and the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving. A part of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, the Center operates programs on the IUPUI and IU Bloomington campuses and collaborates closely with the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

The Polis Center

The Polis Center works with communities in Indiana and beyond to develop and apply knowledge, to build collaborations, and to find innovative solutions to common problems. We excel in community-based research and advanced information technologies, especially geographic information systems (GIS). Working in partnership with other organizations, we address issues of mutual concern, and with our network of relationships, we bring together disparate groups and interests to find common ground.

The Polis Center is an academic research center with a practical and applied orientation. The Greek word "polis" means city, and accordingly we concentrate on issues related to metropolitan Indianapolis and other mid-sized American cities. We are multidisciplinary, community-oriented, entrepreneurial, and creative in our approach to problem-solving. We have forged working relationships with community-based organizations; religious bodies; educational, arts, and media organizations; businesses; governments; social service providers; cultural agencies; charitable endowments, and numerous others. We are funded solely by grants and project income. Since 1989, we have managed over 500 projects with more than $40 million in external funding.

The Institute for Research on Social Issues

IRSI was established to provide the intellectual stimulation and support intrinsic to groupings of like-minded social science scholars. IRSI Researchers investigate such topics as health, human ecology, economics, race and ethnic studies, family and gender studies, marketing and communications, and religion, to name a few. IRSI's mission is supported by the GIS Research Center, the Global Health Communications Center, the Survey Research Center, the Center for Health Geographics, the Health Research Group, the Violence Against Women and Human Rights Study Group, and international partnerships which include the IUPUI-Moi Workgroup and China Studies Workgroup.

The Spanish Resource Center

The Spanish Resource Center (SRC) in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI(located in Cavanaugh Hall 205) is the result of cooperative efforts between the Department of World Languages and Cultures and the Spanish Embassy’s Ministry of Education. Its mission is to improve the teaching of the Spanish language and culture in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, providing a meeting place for those involved in the teaching and study of Hispanic language and culture, including teachers, students, and administrators of all levels. Established in 1998, it is the only Spanish Resource Center in Indiana, and one of only 12 across the country. It provides a large collection of Spanish learning resources (books, videos, DVDs and CDs) and other services to students and teachers of Spanish such as conversation hours, film series, professional development workshops, and immersion days. The Center also promotes various programs and scholarships run by the Spanish Ministry of Education in conjunction with the Departments of Education of the four states mentioned above and several school districts and universities in the Midwest.

The Survey Research Center

The Survey Research Center is a resource for students, faculty, and administration within the IU system, as well as local non-profits and government agencies. The Center can assist academic and applied researchers to develop and implement their projects by providing the following services in their entirety or individually: study design, sampling, instrument development, data collection, data processing, and data analysis. The SRC has the capacity to complete telephone (using a 16-station computer assisted telephone interviewing—CATI—facility), mail, on-line, or face-to-face surveys, and can also help researchers to navigate external, existing survey research data sources. The SRC can be reached at (317) 278-5204.

The Center for the Study of Religion and Amercan Culture

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture. Established in 1989, the Center is based in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Now with almost 50 research fellows, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is considered the premier research institute in the nation working in American religious studies.

Center activities include national conferences and symposia, books, essays, bibliographies and research projects, fellowships for young scholars, data-based communication about developments in the field of American religion, a newsletter devoted to the promotion of Center activities, and the semiannual scholarly periodical Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, which is among the highest-ranked academic journals in the nation.

The Sussman-Steinmetz Research Library

The Sussman - Steinmetz Research Library was established through a contribution of the books, journals, and papers of Marvin B. Sussman, an internationally known family sociologist, through the initiative of Professor Suzanne K. Steinmetz of the IUPUI Sociology Department. Located in Cavanaugh Hall 316, the library contains an extensive collection of family science and sociology books and journals with emphasis on population/demography, aging, family violence, sexuality, medical/health, law, history, race/ethnicity, and deviance. The library is available to students, staff, and faculty for research use. Materials do not circulate.

The Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication

The Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organizaton created in 1998 to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. ICIC strives for excellence in language and intercultural training in academic, professional, and other occupational contexts. The Center is part of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts in the Department of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

The Writing Center

The English Department Writing Program coordinates all first and second semester writing courses at IUPUI, the guided self-placement program, and the University Writing Center. Our mission is to enable all IUPUI students to become better writers for academic, professional, personal, and civic purposes.

The Indiana Teachers of Writing (ITW) Writing Project offers professional development programs for teachers of writing at all levels, kindergarten through university, through summer institutes on campus and year-round programs in schools. ITWWP is part of the National Writing Project, a network with headquarters in Berkeley, California.